BBQ'N While Black at Lake Merritt in Oakland (Response Part 2)

Like, um, the thing that I was mostly thinking about was, you know what I'm saying, was I gonna make it home? You know, um, afterwards, you know, like I said, you know, we—

Knowing the police was on their way?

When the police came? No, the police didn't come until they talked to Shell.

Okay.

And when they came they came with coolness, they came with respect, they said it was even racist.

Hmm.

You know what I'm saying? This is a police officer saying this, like, and the thing about it is, you know, when you have a person of, you know, their origin admit that it's racist, you then start to look at it like, if you knew that it was racist and you knew what, you know, we went through, then why are so many people getting harassed?

Hmm.

Why are so many people getting murdered? Why are so many people, you know, like for instance, like, um, we look at a couple of days ago, okay, our video went viral, great, you know, it went wherever, but you have to look at the situation with the Yale graduate. Sleeping in the dorm, right, and getting the police called on her. And it's like, we'll go back to, you know, in Philadelphia where the 2 Black men were in Starbucks and the police were called there, you know, but there's so many other situations and circumstances where the media is not picking up that story. They're not picking up, you know what I'm saying, like, uh, the voiceless.

Mm-hmm.

And I figured, you know what, now it's time for us to actually show the love.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Like, this is Oakland, so this is our community, this is our backyard. We have to address that. So the feelings still— I'm being honest with you, sometimes, you know what I'm saying, I cry. You know what I'm saying? I would be a grown man and say I cry. You know what I'm saying? It's not that I'm ashamed to say that I cry, but the reason why I cry is because I wonder, did Malcolm and Martin go— was subjected to the things that we were subjected to, how their reaction was?

Hmm.

I wonder when Huey, you know what I'm saying, was doing, you know, his stuff, I wonder, you know what I'm saying, did he break down and cry and say, you know, that fucking cracker, or that pig, or XYZ? And like I said, for me, You know, it's just that conversation that people, people will say, well, if you, if you had your choice to speak with somebody living or dead, who would you speak with? I would say all 3 because I would ask them questions like, you know, how did you deal with this psychologically, mentally, emotionally? You know, how did you deal with this physically? You know, so I think, you know, like I said, I mean, the effects of, effects of it haven't really hit me yet.

Mm-hmm.

You know what I'm saying? But like I said, I can tell you I cry about it because I think about it.

That's heaven. How about you, D? What's your whole feeling in the moment at the time, and then how you feeling now after you seen the momentum that this simple situation— like, we had no idea you were just going to get, you know, throw a couple of pieces of meat on the grill, right? You was trying to chill. So, I mean, tell me, share your feelings.

I mean, at the beginning, I was kind of When she first walked up, I thought she was going to say her piece and keep it pushing. But when she started making the threats and all the other good stuff, I was kind of like, okay, I got a little nervous at first because, I mean—

What kind of threats? The threats about calling the police?

The threats about calling the police and wait till the police get here. And it's like, okay, I mean, now I'm a Black man in the park before Kenzie showed up, sitting here by myself. You know what I'm saying? That's already an intimidation factor for a white woman walking down the street.

My purse!

So I kind of got nervous about that for a minute. Then I kind of got— I really got scared for a minute because I have, you know, I got 2 12-year-olds running around here.

You elicit another set of emotions.

Yeah, because I'm gonna do anything to protect my little ones, whatever it takes. You know what I'm saying? I'll go behind a wall over my kids.

That's against the—

Yeah, you're right.

You know, because— so now that's very interesting because another one of the— from the emotional intelligence lens, there's a code that we use, right, or a strategy that says no matter the situation, never let your emotions overpower your intelligence.

Right.

So even with you saying that, right, And I think that everybody feels that way. I mean, I initially feel like that as well, but if we're behind the walls, then what good are we to our kids?

That's true. Right?

So that's a lesson, not to put you on the spot, but kind of put you on the spot in a safe way, because we're growing in this space, right? Because we don't want to make justification, right? So, but is it easy?

No, no, no, it's not. It's not easy being a Black man, period. It's not easy being a Black queen, you know what I'm saying? So I mean, it's just what it is. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, this, this ain't our America, you know, our country, our, our, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's just when we wake up in the morning and, you know, we can have a job, we can have whatever the case may be, the thing about it is we still living in this white man's world.

Mm-hmm.

Tupac said it like a long time ago, you know what I'm saying? So if you really look at it like No matter what, I don't care if you all on Facebook, Instagram, you know, in your latest foreign or whatever. To the men, you still a nigga. You still a nigga.

Just to go back to, you know, like I said, the emotional part of it too. And I just lost my train of thought that fast.

Don't worry.

Do you cry? I haven't cried yet. I haven't cried yet. But, you know, when I sit there and lay at night, it eats away at me.

But I was there. And he was there too. But people only see the 25-minute version of this video. They don't see the full—

The beginning and the end result.

You don't see the end result. You know what I'm saying? You don't see like the actual harassment. And there is, like I said, I will be quite fair and honest with you and share this with y'all. There is a video that was recorded of her and her aggression. Like we are actually trying to actually get the video right now. from the young lady. She did record it, so we're actually really trying to get it. She actually just did an interview with Huffington Post. If you read the Huffington Post interview, she actually says in the interview that she actually has the video. So we contacted her and asked for the actual video. No matter if it's 9 seconds, no matter if it's 10 seconds, we asked for the video so that, you know, America can actually see A glimpse of what we actually faced for those 3 hours.

Because isn't it interesting, you know, that we always have to work twice as hard to establish the credibility? And like, I get it, like, it's hard not to play the race card, you know, when everything is just happening. Even when you want to try to be neutral, you want to try to go case by case, it does get a little heavy. On us when just time after time after time this happened. Then when we do rise up, it's like, what's your problem? So I get that. And so to— I think it's important for folks, if she spoke, you know, racial slurs, if she came in with that, I mean, it'd be great for us to see it.

Right.

So that folks— because a lot of people feel, and there's a lot of mixed emotions, right? from both sides. And there's a lot of non-African American folks that side with blacks, and there's others that are taking a stance. They think we overreacting again. They think we're putting it on too thick, right?

Right.

And so, I'm looking forward to, you know, seeing that video if you guys get your hands on it. But I want to go back to the response. I think that we put the dope— as a community, we put the dopest response together. By saying, oh, you tripping off one barbecue. We gonna show you. So tell us about that because they showed up. Talk about that experience and what's happening coming up.

They done kept it lit every single weekend, and I love y'all for it. Yeah.

I'm so old, man.

Show for show, man. We finna take it back to the festival at the lake.

We gonna rebirth the festival at the lake, man.

We gonna, man. It's coming again. But if y'all coming out there on the 20th. Man, let's keep it lit.

Come out there on the 25th, we'll be out there.

I do want to make it known, let's keep it responsible, let's keep it respectable, but we gonna do our thing and show them, you know, how we really get down at the Lizade.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Because I like how we marinating the culture, right? And so what we mean by keeping it lit, we mean like come and be and represent, you know, who you are.

Yeah, good representation.

But the most more positive side, because we all got positive vibrations and we all can operate on a higher frequency. Or you can take the low road and be lower frequency, right? We're trying to demonstrate as men, and there's nothing— there's no coward sitting at this table. There's no shame. There's no— we are saying that let's take a lead and make a positive outcome out of this. Because for me, what it looks like when I went by the lake, you know, and stopped by, you just start seeing folks back out there hanging out, you know. And now they were hanging out before, but now we're hanging out with a purpose.

Exactly. But I want to mention that hanging out before too. I mean, a lot of these Oaklanders around here who used to grow up in the days of the Festival at the Lake, and then when that beginning of that gentrification era came through, they start posting a lot of signs. Ain't no cruising, no barbecuing, none of this, none of that, none of this. And all of a sudden when we start dying down, they ended the Festival at the Lake and we start dying down, coming, those signs slowly disappeared and those others start coming in and chilling. Right, right, right. Now, you know, we gotta be mindful of that. They did that shit for a purpose, man. Man, but we, we, we gotta stay.

Yeah, yeah.